Wikipedia: Genocide/Talk

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Let's start discussion here.

Why is genocide still possible ?
All people ask separately are strong against it and it happens everyday.
Does not history teach us anything ?

Please name sources for the numbers. --Yooden

Do the cases in China and the Soviet Union fit our definition of genocide? Were they directed against a specific group within the country (i.e. Ukranians, Tibetans, Etc.) or just against the population in general that opposed the communist reorganizations?

They could be divided into several smaller ones, but were definitely targeted against ethnic groups. --Yooden

Note that all of the genocidal campaigns lis

ted here are 20th century. Someone want to add something about the Cathars and the Pope's (Innocent III, I think) declaration of a campaign of extermination? The slaughter of Huguenots would also be a worthwhile addition. --Belltower

Get the exact figures from Rummel and post them one by one. This topic is to conrtoversial to be vague. --Yooden

I think we should add a qualification that the German 6 million number represents only Jews, not Gypsies, homosexuals, mental deficients, who were also targeted. Something like 2 million more, I seem to recall. --rmhermen

how does Cambodia fit the definition if it was the nationality killing other members of the nationality for political ideology? It seems much more akin to the Soviet campaign against the Kulaks than anything else. Am I being obtuse? --MichaelTinkler

As I understand the law on the topic, it wasn't legally genocide under international law. Maybe a crime against humanity, but not genocide. Genocide only applies to killings on racial, ethnic, national or religious grounds, not on politicial grounds. -- Simon J Kissane

Cambodia killings were on social-groups grounds, and I don't care about "international law". It was genocide.

Could you name the groups it was directed against so we canadd them to the main entry? -rmhermen

 *The ethnic Chinese
 *city dwellers
 *those who were educated
 *those who had been exposed to Western ideas - French speakers, English speakers

There was a vast amount of overlap between these groups.

US genocide - The number killed on the Trail of Tears is around 4000, not 100,000. Speading smallpox among Indians was never US government policy.

Correct. The smallpox was spread by Britain, particularly General (Later Lord) Jeffrey Amherst (as in Amherst, Massachusetts) in 1763 during the French and Indian war.

See http://www.nativeweb.org/pages/legal/amherst/lord_jeff.html and particularly www.nativeweb.org/pages/legal/amherst/34_40_305_fn.jpeg and www.nativeweb.org/pages/legal/amherst/34_41_114_fn.jpeg for scanned images of letters to and from Amherst on the subject, from the Library of Congress and the British Manuscript Project.

I changed the subject heading to North America from the United States, since the United States did not exist during this war, so it is hardly fair to blame it on them. Probably a complete catalog of genocidal events, or a catalog of crimes against Indian peoples, would require a more detailed category scheme then what we have here, - Tim

The 100,000 is an estimate of the entire death count, not just trail of tears, but we do need a more authoritative number. --Dmerrill

One real problem with efforts such as this is that apparently politically motivated people toss out numbers apparently off the tops of their heads. There have been estimates of the number of Indians killed that have exceeded other people's estimates of the total Indian population of North America. So to get historically accurate numbers, or at least fair estimates, is a challenge. - Tim

Armenian genocide was described as the first genocide of the century. However, Mexican regimes murdered probably more than 1 million people from 1900-1920. It is likely that more Indians were murdered by the Mexican government in the 20th century then were murdered by the US government in all its history - but you don't hear about that, because it doesn't really serve anyone's agenda to remember those victims.

Well, wikipedia is your chance to document it for those of us who are ignorant. Please take advantage of it. :-) --Dmerrill

Re the comment: "I don't care about 'international law'. It was genocide."

The fact that we are morally repulsed by a particular mass murder shouldn't get in the way of accuracy in the articles here. If genocide is defined to be a particular kind of mass murder, rather than just any form of mass murder whatsoever, then we should definitely not include certain political killings in that category. Create another article if you want, but let's not let our emotional feelings about the issue cloud the accuracy of our articles. Unless the Cambodian mass murders can be described as directed as a particular ethnic, racial, religious or similar such grounds, then it should not be included in this article. I am not saying that the Cambodian killings should not be considered genocide, but I do think that we need to understand how the Cambodian killings fall under the definition of that term.

Someone wrote:

: No scientific study suggests that killing national, ethnical, racial and religious groups and killing social, cultural or political groups are different phenomenons. Very often it's impossible to tell the difference between two. Therefore popular definition is probably more useful that legal one.

Well, there is a big difference; they are motivated by different sorts of concerns. Killing communists or capitalists is very different from killing Jews or Gypsies or from killing Christians or Muslims. The last ones are motivated by racial, ethnic or religious hatreds; the first are motivated more by political calculations ("if we don't kill all the communist sympathisers they will take over the country", "if we don't kill the capitalists they will destroy the revolution"). Finally, etymologically speaking the legal definition is more correct than the popular one; a racial, ethnic or religious group is much more arguably a genos than communists or capitalists or intellectuals or people who wear glasses are. And I do wonder if I'm being overly generous by talking of a "popular definition" -- a "common misconception" might be more accurate. -- Simon J Kissane

Religious/racial/ethnical/national groups correlate strongly with political/social/cultural groups. Correlation between religious/racial/ethnical/national genocides and political/social/cultural genocides is also clearly and strongly positive. I don't know about any event of genocide commited against only one of these two kinds. Also Rummel clearly showed that genocides agaist both of groups correlate only to power of government and to level of war/revolution, and not to any real issues.

And etymology isn't any important for science. --Taw

Regarding political vs. racial, religious, ethnic and/or cultural: It seems to me that there is usually significant overlap between political views and what sub-groups a particular individual belongs to. I don't see any situation in history where killings were done for purely political reasons.

Political views seem to me to often (not always) be an outgrowth of a person's ethnic background, religion, and culture... and because of those, race as well. I'm not just talking about stereotypes here either, there's a lot of self-selection going on. Blacks (African-Americans, or whatever) in the USA have often stuck with the Democratic party because they have believed that if they stick together, they will have more political influence in the party, and thereby in general if the Demos win elections. This has worked... sort of. -- ansible

To take the classic example of genocide, what political belief were the Jews in Nazi Germany exterminated for? None. The Nazis murdered them left, right and centre, without the slightest regard to their political beliefs.

You are correct to note that political groups singled out for killing often overlap with racial or ethnic ones; but that does not prove that there is no practical difference. At best it shows that the same events can sometimes be classed as both political killings and genocide.

Finally, Merriam-Webster supports my definition. (Though to be fair the American Heritage Dictionary 3 doesn't.) But irregardless, the legal sense certaintly is the original sense of the term. -- Simon J Kissane

You are wrong here. Jews in Nazi Germany were much more communist than other ethnic/religious groups and communists were one of main Nazi targets. Also they were culturally different from Germans and improportionally many Jews in 3rd Reich were bankers, factory owners etc. So overlap between political/cultural/social and religious/racial/ethnical/national was *very* high.

: But was that the reason for the genocide? Did the Nazis murder Jews because they were disproportionately Communists or bankers or factory owners, or because they were Jews? -- Simon J Kissane

The same applies to communist genocides.

And "legal" definitions are also of little use for science. --Taw

: If there is some phenomena being scientifically studied here, which is significantly broader than the original (not just the legal) meaning of the word, why call it by the same name? Why not use a different word? I am pretty sure the legal concept of genocide predates most of the scientific studies you refer to (though to be honest I'm not entirely sure what these scientific studies are.) -- Simon J Kissane

What does science have to do with it?

Genocides are phenomenon which can be, and actually are, scientifically studied, with good results. --Taw

well, etymology may not be vital for science, but I am grateful that most 19th and early 20th century scientists knew Greek well enough that we don't have any more 'bicycle' hybrids than exist. There's no reason NOT to know the meanings of things as well as their functions.

WRT Australian Aborigines and the stolen generation, claiming that it definitely was genocide is a gross simplification. Many people involved in the removals claim that a)they believed it was being done voluntarily, and b) it was being done to for the welfare of the removed children. Determining the truth seems to be almost impossible. However, there were cases of outright massacres of Aboriginal people throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth century, which are pretty incontrovertibly (relatively small-scale) genocide. Anyone like to try and summarise the debate in a form that can fit on the parent page? --Robert Merkel

Well, it is clear that the Australian government did remove Aborigines from their parents, and that most of these Aborigines claim they were forced to give their children up. Part of the legal defintion of genocide is "Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group", so if the removal policy was carried out with the intention of destroying the ethnic identity of Aboriginal people, it was genocide. The official policy of the Australian government was assimilation, that is, make Aboriginals become indistinguishable from Europeans, which means to destroy Aboriginal identity. Yes, many people involved in the removal believed that removing the children was in the children's best interests, since thereby they would benefit from the obviously "superior" European culture; basically they believed that genocide was in the best interest of its victims. But obviously, believing genocide to be in its victims best interests is still genocide. -- Simon J Kissane

Well, it is clear that the Australian government did remove Aborigines from their parents, and that most of these Aborigines claim they were forced to give their children up.

: Yes, but even that claim's hard to establish reliably. Examine the court cases on the issue. --Robert Merkel

Related to australia - have I missed it, or has the genocide of the Tasmanian Aborigines been omitted? And I think that the "Stolen Generation" issue deserves it's own page. -- MB

: Wrt Tasmanian Aborigines, yes it has been omitted, and good point. Yes, the "Stolen Generations" issue *does* deserve its own page. --Robert Merkel